Beyond Selidor

This has been a weekend blissfully free of any plan or activity. Originally, the idea had been to go to the annual street fair in Cambridge, which is held along one long road, lined with restaurants, cafes, and shops (mainly things like South Asian, East Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern grocery stores) on the first Saturday of December. However, the storm put paid to that — the event was cancelled due to the safety risk — and the cancelled plans and weather led to two days of much needed rest at home.

I finished another book in my Benjamin January reread, worked on Yuletide stuff, watched biathlon with Matthias, and spent ages writing and replying to long comments on Dreamwidth. It was an utterly lazy Saturday, with no gym (since I hadn't booked the classes in expectation of being in Cambridge during that time), and no time outside the house apart from a quick run to the bakery first thing (before the storm began) to get pastries. By about midday, the storm had arrived in earnest, but it wasn't too bad in this part of the world — just lashing rain, and strong winds. I know my friends in Ireland, Wales, and the west of England had it much worse, including at least one friend in Wales who lost power briefly, but for us in the east, it was basically just a cosy day at home.

The weather's still pretty miserable here, so I'm not planning to do much today — a longer yoga class after I've written this post, a bit more comfort rereading, and slow-cooking tonight's dinner for most of the afternoon. Otherwise, I will carry on what I've also been doing for much of yesterday, and the previous week, which is glue myself to updates and analysis of all the extraordinary political events taking place around the world.



Initially I was keeping a fairly close eye on what was happening in South Korea, Romania and Georgia (the country, not the US state). This Observer editorial is fairly broad-brush and simplistic, but covers the main points, while this longer essay by Timothy Snyder is a rather depressing comparison of what happened in Korea with what he fears could happen in an equivalent scenario in the US.

Then, for most of yesterday, I was swept up by events in Syria, which are more complex, but which the Syrian democracy activists and journalists of whom I'm aware are fairly unanimous in saying are a very good thing, even if you take the involvement of Islamists and the Turkish government (and the obvious uncertainty now that the regime has been toppled but not yet replaced) into account. I've mostly been following this through accounts on Bluesky (which thankfully can be viewed without signing up), mainly from Syrians who were involved in the initial revolution in their country in the 2010s, and suffered the most appalling consequences when that revolution was crushed, and their various supporters from elsewhere in the world.

One activist, who was imprisoned by the regime in 2011 and has been living in exile since his release, noted that Syrians like him were 'track[ing] the fall of the regime not in cities, but in prisons [of political prisoners] liberated,' which I think says it all.

I hope everyone in my part of the world stayed safe this weekend, and that the consequences of the storm weren't too severe.